Before anyone could answer, the police scanner sounded, dancing across the kitchen counter like some big metallic insect.
Addison laid the locket back on the table and crossed the kitchen to listen to the dispatcher.
“I’ll be damned. Another barn fire—Shellabarger Road. That’s clear up in the north end of the county.” She picked up the kitchen phone and called Pat Robinette. “Yeah, looks like we’ve got another one. Uh huh. See you there,” she said and hung up. She looked uncertainly at her family. “Well, this could be another late night,” she said.
“Before you go,” Duncan lifted the delicate locket from the kitchen table and stepping behind her, fastened it around her neck. “I think you need to take June with you,” he said.
“I think in a lot of ways, I always have,” Addison smiled, fingering the necklace. She drew a narrow reporter’s notebook and a fresh pack of cigarettes from a drawer. “This time, I’m glad to have her along for the ride.”
Grabbing her purse and her car keys, Addison waved goodbye and headed out the door.
Chapter 27
Flames were still licking through the remnants of the barn when Addison and Pat pulled up in their separate vehicles.
Shellabarger Road was at the north end of the county tucked into Shanahan Township, a narrow, seldom-traveled road paved with gravel barely sticking to the tar. There were more trees than houses on the narrow road and even in the setting sun, the surrounding soybean and cornfields seemed to go on forever.
The small battered house beside the barn didn’t look as if it had been lived in for some time, Addison thought. The barn didn’t look like it could have been much before it caught fire, either.
The sun hung in the western sky, just barely above the horizon. It was almost at that point between daylight and dark when the light (or the lack of it) played games with a person’s vision, changing what could be into what might not be at all.
“We’ve got to quit meeting like this.” Pat joked as held his Nikon up to his eye and focused on a knot of men just beyond the fire trucks.
“Do you realize this is the fourth barn to burn in Plummer County in the last week?”
“Four?” He lowered his camera and looked at her.
“Think about it: that last fire that Porter covered and screwed the story up so badly…”
“The electrical fire at the Amish man’s place?” smirked Pat.
“Yeah, that one,” Addison rolled her eyes, as she ticked off each fire on her fingers, a cigarette at the corner of her mouth. “Then there was the fire at the Jensen place, where they found Ripsmatta’s body. Then, Dennis covered that one fire where the green hay ignited and now this one. The Jensen fire was suspicious, obviously. The fire Dennis covered was accidental. Police think Talley Lundgren caused the Kernenberger fire and could be involved in the Thorn kidnapping. Now here we go again, way out here in the boondocks.”
“Hmmm.” Pat swung his camera back up to his eye. “Hey, isn’t that Gary McGinnis? What’s he doing all the way out here?”
Addison took a final puff from her cigarette and tossed it to the gravel pavement, grinding it under her shoe. “Why would McGinnis be out here?” she asked, tilting her chin upward and exhaling the cigarette smoke.
“I dunno. Something with the Lyndzee Thorn case?”
“I think we just gout ourselves another suspicious fire. Let’s go find out.”
A Plummer County Sheriff’s deputy was cordoning off the house and barn, stringing yellow caution tape, starting from tree to tree in the front yard, winding it around the doorknob of the dilapidated little house and to a couple more trees close to the burning barn.
“This place doesn’t look lived in. I wonder who it belongs to?” Addison said, flipping back the cover of her reporter’s notebook.
“Why are they putting the tape up now?” Pat asked. “That’s not normal at any other fire scene.”
“Not until they’ve got the fire out and they want to secure the scene. Something’s up. What do you want to bet?”
Addison made her way past the tanker truck and two engines to a knot of men. Some were deputies from the PCSO. Addison recognized Sven Sonengaard, chief of the Shanahan Township Volunteer Fire Department, whose department was the only department to respond to the scene. Firefighters worked calmly, almost in a laid back manner, to control the fire and keep it from spreading to the house and the surrounding corn fields.
Gary McGinnis and agents Renfield and Seevers circled the chief. Sonengaard was pointing to the barn as the FBI agents wrote furiously. McGinnis was shaking his head in disgust. Sonengaard turned, pointing off toward the left of the barn. Addison’s gaze followed to where he was pointing, startled to see a black Dodge van with ‘Plummer County Coroner’ written on the side. The back was opened and a couple firefighters were loading an olive green body bag on a gurney into the back of the van while Bucky Bovir looked on.
“Shit. We got another fatality,” Addison said. She nudged Robinette beside her and pointed. He responded by focusing the Nikon and firing off a few shots.
“I swear to God, I’ve never known Plummer County to have this much crime,” he said.
“Tell me about it.” Addison replied, breaking into a trot. She left Pat to get more photographs of the firefighters and the burning barn. “Gary! Hey, Gary! What’s going on?” she called.
Seevers looked at McGinnis and shook his head.
“Hey Penny.” Gary waved at her. “Chief Sonengaard can tell you the details of the fire. I can tell you that one male was found dead at the scene and we are investigating the circumstances surrounding that death.”
“But why are you and the feds here to look into this and not the SO?” Addison pointed at Seevers and Renfield with her pen.
“We aren’t sure, but there may be some connection to the disappearance of Lyndzee Thorn,” Seevers spoke up. “That’s all we’re prepared to say at this time.”
“That’s fine. Is Bucky, I mean, Doc Bovir, going to do an immediate autopsy?”
McGinnis nodded. “We should know something by morning. Sheriff Boderman’s on his way, just so you know.”
“Thanks.” Addison turned to Sonengaard. “What have we got here, Chief?”
The graying chief pushed back his yellow helmet and scratched his thinning hair. Sonengaard farmed almost 700 acres in Shanahan Township. Content to raise mostly hogs, corn and soybeans, he’d been the fire department’s head for nearly 20 years. His wife, Hilda, had been the physical education teacher at Jubilant Falls High School until her retirement 10 years ago. Addison could still remember the rough calisthenics that the tall Swedish woman had put her class through.
“We responded about 7 p.m. when someone called from their cell phone that there was a fire. The female caller said she’d noticed one road over the smoke from their back yard. She knew there weren’t a whole lot of houses down here, so she thought she’d drive down and check it out. When she got here, she saw it was a barn fire and called 911,” Sonengaard said. “We brought the structure under control in about twenty minutes, but it looks like it’s a total loss. Not that it looked like it was much to start with.”
“Anything on the cause?”
“Well, it looks like another arson. We’ve got several hot spots where the fire was started. We found the body first off. It was lying up against the outside wall, wrapped in plastic. There were indications whatever accelerant was used had also been poured on the body.”
“What kind of indications?”
“There was a strong odor of gasoline.”
“Do you think this fire is connected to the other two suspicious barn fires in the county this week?”
Sonengaard shrugged. “Awful strange to my thinking. Four fires in one week? I don’t know yet, so I can’t say.”
“Do you think the person who called was the person who set the fire?”
“Entirely possible. It was a cell phone call, so we can’t pinpoint who made the call.”
�
��Who owns this place?” Addison didn’t look up as she talked, concentrating on taking notes.
“I don’t know anymore. When my kids were younger, there was a couple who lived here and he worked farm labor for me occasionally, but I don’t remember his name. Whoever they were, they’re long gone,” Sonengaard shrugged. “The place has been abandoned for years.”
“Total loss then?”
“Probably. We’ll have the state fire marshal send an investigator down, since we think it’s suspicious and since we’ve got one fatality.”
“Chief McGinnis? Sir, may I see you for a moment?” A deputy called out. The young man was standing by a window that had been boarded up. The plywood had been broken out from the inside and pieces exploded from the window frame like some spiked wooden bloom.
Automatically Addison followed Gary, the FBI agents close behind. A few steps in front of the window, the deputy held up his hand to her, wordlessly indicating she shouldn’t come any closer. Respectfully, she stopped. Seevers nodded curtly at her as he and Renfield passed her.
“What have you got, son?” McGinnis asked.
The deputy pointed at the ground. “Bullet casings, sir, and that rock—right over there. It looks like it’s got blood on it.”
Gary pulled a flashlight from his gun belt and looked at the ground. “Looks like our victim may have been dead before he ever made it to the barn.”
***
“Please, Talley! Can we stop for a minute? Please?” Lyndzee’s breath caught painfully in her side as she stopped suddenly, dropping the load of chain she’d carried in her arms. “I can’t go any further.”
The tall raggedly man and the young girl had passed through cornfields and what seemed to Lyndzee to be innumerable groves of trees before she just couldn’t take another step. They were in yet another cornfield, but close to a road. It seemed like they’d been moving forever, although it had only been an hour or so since Talley and Lyndzee had run from the little farmhouse.
“We got to get back to the camp, Missy. We got to make sure we’re clean away from here. Can’t let no one see you. ” Talley knelt in the green cornstalks and put his bony hand on her head, indicating with gentle pressure she should also kneel.
“Can we please take this off? I can’t walk any further with it on,” Lyndzee whined. “I’m tired and I’m hungry and my ankle hurts.”
Talley pulled a large pocketknife from his boot, flipping the blade out with his dirty, calloused thumb “Hold still, girly-girl.” He slipped the backside of blade between the girl’s ankle and the dog collar and began to saw it off. Grateful as she was to be saved by him, Lyndzee wrinkled her nose and turned her face away, trying to avoid his strong body odor.
“Talley, I want to go home, right now. I want my own bed and my own house and I want my mommy and daddy,” she whined.
“I’m sure you do, and I’m sure they want you, too. Hold still.” With a grunt, he cut through the knife blade through the leather. The dog collar fell onto the pile of chain. “There!”
“Oh, Talley, thank you!” Lyndzee rubbed her ankle. It was red and scratched where the edge of the collar had rubbed. “Can we go home now?”
“We got to make sure everything is safe, Missy, before we take you home.”
“But why can’t we just go? You saved me! You took good care of me! I know my mommy and daddy will be really glad that you brung me home.”
“I don’t think so. The police, they think ole Talley is the one who took you. They done took me in and asked me where you were and why I took you. I was looking for food for us the last time you came to see me. I knew there was ee-vile looking for you, because that’s what they told me. I knew bad happened to you when they took me back to the camp and all that was there was your other shoe.” Talley’s words were coming faster and faster. He turned suddenly and pounded his head with the flat of his hand.
“Who told you?”
For a second, he didn’t answer, but moaned to himself as he pounded his head. “Stop, stop stop!” He hissed, striking the side of his head with each word.
“Talley, are you all right? Who told you there were bad people looking for me?”
The gaunt old man turned back and looked at the girl. “I can’t tell you,” he whispered hoarsely, his eyes wide with terror. “They won’t let me. But I know they want us to make sure that it’s safe before we send you home.”
Lyndzee stood up. “There’s a car coming. Maybe we can get a ride.”
“No! Wait!” He pulled her back down into the corn. “Let ole Talley do the talking.”
He stood up and walked to the edge of the road. Parting the corn, Lyndzee watched as the raggedy man turned to face traffic, then stuck out his thumb.
It was an old pick-up truck, filled with migrant workers. Three older men sat in the cab of the truck and four younger men crowded into the rusty bed. Their clothes were dirty and they were passing around a quart bottle of beer, laughing and talking in rapid Spanish, obviously at the end of a long day at one of the larger Plummer County farms.
“My little granddaughter and me need a ride,” Talley said to the passenger.
The passenger jerked his thumb toward the bed and nodded. “Hop in, amigo,” he said.
Talley motioned to Lyndzee, who trotted out of the corn. He lifted her into the truck bed and climbed in after her.
“So where are you going, old man?” asked a young man in a straw hat. He handed the bottle of beer to Talley, who nodded in thanks and took a swig of the bottle before answering. His knuckles were bruised and bloody from fighting, but nobody seemed to notice.
“Just as far as you’ll carry us,” Talley answered, wiping the beer from his lips with his tattered sleeve. “Just as far as we can go.”
Chapter 28
“Goddammit! All of you get the hell out of here! I don’t want this crime scene contaminated anymore than it already is!” Sheriff Ernest Boderman’s yell could be heard above the diesel hum of the fire engines. He slammed the door of his black SUV and stomped toward the group of people standing near the house. “What in the hell are you doing here, McGinnis? You are so far out of your jurisdiction, I could have you charged with obstruction of justice!” he bellowed.
Gary McGinnis clicked off his flashlight, and pushing Addison and the young deputy out of his way, strode angrily toward the sheriff. Chief Sonengaard stepped quickly between the two men.
“Now, Ernie, calm down. Calm down.” Sonengaard laid a calming hand on the sheriff’s shoulders. “You can blame me for calling in Gary.”
“You ignorant Swede! Don’t you have any idea what chain of command to follow?” Boderman’s bushy eyebrows seemed to come together into one fuzzy caterpillar above his burning eyes. “I ought to have your badge, too, you stupid old man! You’ve been running this goddamn excuse for a volunteer fire department for so goddamn long, you think you know everything! Well, you don’t!”
“He’s perfectly aware of the chain of command!” McGinnis stepped from behind the fire chief and poked his finger into the sheriff’s chest. “The chief here found a suspect from the Thorn case dead in this burning barn and thought that I might want to fucking know about it!”
Addison’s head snapped up and she began to write furiously. No one seemed to notice anything except the sheriff’s fury.
“Well, he needs to be following the chain of command! I should have gotten the first call!” Boderman bellowed.
“Maybe I should have called you first, you’re right,” Sonengaard said soothingly. “Everybody knows what a big case this has been and I just thought—”
crime scene that is so contaminated since you and your yahoos have walked through it, God knows if I’ll ever get any decent evidence out of it!”
“Sheriff,” Agent Renfield stepped up behind Gary. “I would suggest that this discussion be handled somewhere else. The newspaper is here.” He pointed at Addison, who smiled weakly and waved.
“Missy, if you’re not off the property in two secon
ds, I’m charging you with trespassing!”
“I’m going, sheriff! I’m going! Give me time to get my photographer.”
“I’ll escort Mrs. McIntyre off the property and then I’ll make sure her photographer comes no closer than the edge of the pavement.” Gary turned and took Addison by the elbow. When they were close to Addison’s car and out of the sheriff’s earshot, she spoke.
“What’s going on?”
“We believe that the body is Roy Castlewheel,” McGinnis answered softly. “But that’s off the record right now, until we notify next of kin. What he was doing way out here, we’re not sure.”
“You think he was dead before he ended up in the barn?
“The body wasn’t in the barn—it was wrapped up in some plastic sheeting of some kind, then laid against the wall and doused with gasoline. From the shell casings and that rock outside the window, there could have been some sort of fight before the fire. Bucky will have to be the one to decide the manner of death. At least that’s what it looks like now. “
“Can I have this information for tomorrow’s paper?”
“I can sure try. Boderman’s going to be all wrapped up in getting his turf battles settled before anything else happens. It may be late.”
“I can wait.” She scrawled her cell phone number across the back of a business card and handed it to McGinnis.
“Where will you be?”
“Just call my cell phone and tell me where to meet you. I’ll be there.”
***
Six hours later—at nearly 2 a.m.—Addison sat in a booth at the Waffle House at the west end of Jubilant Falls. Nursing a cup of lukewarm coffee, she watched as late-night shoppers wandered in and out of the 24-hour grocery at the strip mall behind the restaurant. The huge white letters of the Wal-Mart next to the grocery reflected the light of the full moon as a few wispy clouds slid slowly through the night sky.
Barn Burner (Jubilant Falls series Book 1) Page 20